The work I’m doing on a client’s new Web site has me thinking about navigational structure.
Whether you’re organizing a Web site or a magazine article, a museum exhibit or your family’s letters and memorabilia, there are only five ways to structure information. Richard Saul Wurman, author of Information Architects, uses the acronym LATCH to define them:

Location

Alphabet

Time

Category

Hierarchy

For your Web site’s structure to work, each navigational component should fit one of these approaches.

Anecdotes make your messages easier to believe, understand and remember.

“Stories are the most powerful form of human communication.”

— Peg C. Neuhauser
Author, Corporate Legends and Lore

If you want to win the hearts and minds of your audience members, you must be a master storyteller. Stories can help you:

Get and keep reader attention. It’s no secret that our audiences suffer from information overload. Each day, Americans face an average of 5,000 attempts to spark their interest — that’s nearly 2 million messages a year. In this environment, communicators must cut through the clutter to grab our audience’s attention. The best way to do that is through storytelling.

Bring your mission, vision and values to life. These are arguably some of an organization’s most important messages. Yet in most companies, they’re relegated to laminated cards in employees’ wallets or to the back of the annual report — in six-point type. But storytelling can bring these defining statements to life. In fact, there is no other way to adequately communicate these big-picture elements.

Enhance credibility. People who are cynical about statistics — and who isn’t these days? — find stories credible. It’s the Peer Principle of Persuasion: Our audience members believe that if it worked for someone else, it will work for them.

If you want someone to buy what you’re selling — whether you’re pitching products and services or positions and ideas — you must first engage them. And nothing engages readers quite as well as creative material.

Welcome

Join the public relations conversation and get connected with expert insight from our guest bloggers! The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of PRSA.